10-4-48 2 SD 3-8-41 Dolor one you and 19row 21902 2366 To the Wor/bipfull my much honour- SIRT 0975 di alil bofold a oj a double account that (the custom of Writer's ha ving given me fuck arbad vantage) I may tell the pre fent and futute Ages, how much love and honour your Piety, Sobriety, Integrity and Moderation, in an Age when luch Vertues grow mto contempt, or into lifeless Images and Names: And how much I am my felf your debter, A } for 9 for the manifold expreffions of your love; have proceeded well, 1 of of anorher world, with the wisdom of a foreseeing man, till he is going out of this, fecurus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit, ut Perf.& quibus in folo vivendi caufa palato eft, ut furo. When fuch fenfual fouls muft be dragg'd out of their pampered corrup tible flesh, to divine revenge, and go with the beginnings of endless horrour, to the world where they might have found everlasting rest, what joy will then be the portion of mortified and patient Believers, whofe Treasures, and Hearts, and Converfations in Heaven, are now the foretaste of their poffeffion, as the Spirit of Chrift which caufeth this, is the feal of God, and the pledge and earnest of their inheritance. If a Hefh-pleafing life in a dark, diftracted, bruitifh world, were better than a life with God and Angels, methinks yet they that know they cannot have what they would, fhould make fure of what they may have: And they that cannot keep what they love, fhould learn to love what they may keep Wonderfull ftupidity! That they who fee, that carrying dead bodies to the grave, is as common a work, as the Midwifes takeing children into the world, and that this 44 life life is but the road to another, and that all men are pofting on to their journeys end, should think no more confiderately whither so many thoufand fouls do go, that daily fhoot the gulf of death and return no more to the world which once they called their home! That men will have no house or home, but the fhip which carryeth them so swiftly to eternity!, and spend their time in furnishing a dwelling on such a tempeftuous Sea, where winds and tide are hafting them to the fhore! and even to the end are contriving to live where they are daily dying! and care for no habitation but on horse back! That almost all men horse-back! die much wifer than they lived; and yet the certain foreknowledge of death will not ferve to make them more feasonably and more fafely wife! Wonderful! that it fhould be poffible for a man awake, to believe that he muft, fhortly be gone from earth, and enter into an unchangeable enda lefs life, and yet not bend the thoughts of his foul, and the labours of his life, to fe cure his true and durable felicity! But Adam bath given fm the antecedency to grace, and madness the priority to misdom, and |